SELECTING AND TRAINING THE CREWS

Moving Into Flight Operations

After a problem-filled 1963, Project Gemini looked toward better things
in 1964. The first flight test of the spacecraft and its Titan II launch
vehicle went off on April 11, raising hopes of a manned flight before
year's end.33 Two days later, the
Manned Spacecraft Center announced the names of the first crews for the
two-man earth-orbital missions. As might have been expected, the
Commander of the first Gemini mission was one of the Original Seven,
Virgil I. ("Gus") Grissom, who had ridden the second
suborbital Mercury flight in July 1961. Paired with Grissom was one of
the second astronaut group, John W. Young. Their backup crew likewise
had a representative from each of the first two astronaut classes,
Walter M. Schirra, Jr., pilot on Mercury-Atlas 8, and Thomas P.
Stafford.34

A week after the announcement, the four Gemini crewmen headed into a
full mission-specific training schedule. At the spacecraft builder's
plant in St. Louis, at MSC in Houston, and at the Cape in Florida they
put in long hours learning the design and function of the spacecraft
systems, following the assembly and testing of their spacecraft,
attending briefings on program and mission objectives, and practicing
such tasks as getting out of a floating spacecraft. Simulators
duplicated as closely as possible most of the conditions of launch,
orbital flight, and recovery (weightlessness being a notable exception),
and in these simulators the crews practiced normal operations as well as
all the likely malfunctions their training officers could think of
[See Appendix 7 for a summary discussion of
simulation and training]. Occasional trips to the Navy's man-rated
centrifuge in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, gave them practice in enduring
the acceleration forces ("g-loads") of launch and reentry.
Training stretched from a planned 7 months to 1 1 when their flight was
delayed by problems with the second unmanned test, and by the time their
flight was ready for launch on March 23, 1965, the crews would have been
hard to surprise with anything that might come up.35

When crews were named on July 27, 1964, for the second Gemini mission,
Slayton broke the pattern of designating an orbital veteran as
commander, choosing four inexperienced men for Gemini IV even though one
Mercury astronaut had not yet been assigned.* James A. McDivitt and Edward H. White II
were named commander and pilot of the prime crew, backed up by Frank
Borman and James A. Lovell, Jr., all members of the second astronaut
class.36 Flight experience seemed
clearly to be a factor in Slayton's choice of crews, but it was just as
clearly not the only factor. L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., pilot on the
34-hour, 22-orbit Mercury 9 mission, was not assigned until the Gemini V
crew was named in February 1965; his pilot was Charles
("Pete") Conrad, Jr., of the second group. Their backups, both
from the second group, were Neil A. Armstrong and Elliott M. See, Jr.37

After Grissom and Young completed Gemini 3, Slayton announced that their
backup crew, Schirra and Stafford, would be the prime crew for Gemini
VI, backed up by Grissom and Young. To trainees eagerly seeking some
clue to their prospects for flight assignment, this signaled that
appointment to a backup crew was the key to flying a mission. The system
Slayton followed, as long as circumstances permitted, was to promote
each backup crew to prime crew of the next available mission after their
own prime crew had flown. Each flight had different objectives,
requiring different training, and the prime and backup crews had to
train as a team to perform most efficiently. Almost to a man, the
astronauts professed being in the dark as to exactly how Slayton chose
crew members for their first assignment, but that did not matter once
they perceived that when they were named to a backup crew they were, at
last, in line for a flight assignment.38

* Of the Original Seven, Glenn had
resigned, Carpenter was working in Project Sealab, and Slayton was
medically disqualified At the press conference naming the Gemini 3 crews
it was also announced that Alan Shepard was suffering from a middle-ear
inflammation that grounded him as well. (Later that year Shepard took
over from Slayton as chief of the Astronaut Office.) Only Cooper
remained unassigned at this time.

38. All the astronauts this author has
interviewed have stated that they never understood exactly what
determined their first assignment to a crew; see author's interviews
with Alan L. Bean, Harrison H. Schmitt, Eugene A. Cernan, and Joseph P.
Kerwin, Jr., transcripts in JSC History Office files; with Paul J.
Weitz, transcript in Skylab files, Fondren Library, Rice Univ.; also
Collins, Carrying the Fire, p. 141, and Slayton interview,
Oct. 15, 1984. A special scientific committee convened at OSSA's request
by Rice University to recommend ways to provide more opportunities for
scientific training of astronauts noted that criteria for crew selection
were a mystery to the astronauts; see n. 61, below.